


"Ten letters, ‘a warm emotion shared between companions.’ "

by AloryShannon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, genfic is awesome, platonic friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-22
Updated: 2011-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AloryShannon/pseuds/AloryShannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early on a Sunday morning, Sirius and Hermione bond over something a bit unexpectedly.  Written for the Multifandom Friendship Commentfic Fest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Ten letters, ‘a warm emotion shared between companions.’ "

The cup of tea in front of him stopped steaming nearly a quarter of an hour ago, and his toast has gone quite cold, but Sirius is too focused on the newspaper spread out on the table in front of him to pay either any mind. He chews thoughtfully on the plastic end of one of the Muggle pens either Harry or Hermione had left scattered about number twelve, Grimmauld Place, his eyes rolling towards the ceiling, his brow drawn down in a pensively straight line.

Admittedly, crossword puzzles are not really His Thing--they’re Moony’s, but that’s the whole point of this, really. Sirius knows by now that Remus always buys a copy of that Muggle paper, the _Sunday Times,_ on the first day of every week, and then spends the next hour or two (at the very least) agonising over that week’s crossword puzzle. During that time, he was unusually inclined towards snapping at people--namely, whoever happened to interrupt him while he was working the puzzle. And heaven help them all if he _got stuck…_

It was really quite unacceptable, a typically boring, Moony-ish way to start off a week, all that _thinking_ and _words_ and such, and the exclusion of well-intentioned souls who only wanted to help him along a bit so they could do something else far more entertaining (which was _anything else at all,_ really). Sirius had, in the past, tried to put a stop to this habit in various sorts of ways, and all had ultimately met with failure. Remus always found it whenever Sirius hid it. Tearing up the paper or spilling coffee all over it only got him yelled at before Remus left to get another copy. He could only pretend to be reading that section for so long before Remus insisted he hand it over, and no one else in the house ever seemed the slightest bit interested in filling out that blasted puzzle before Remus could get to it.

Which meant it was up to Sirius. It was definitely worth a try--Sirius knows his best friend well enough to be certain that if Remus sees all the answers already filled out, he won’t see a point in going to get another paper, since that would be sort of like cheating, and already knowing the answers would take all the fun out of it anyway.

Sirius scowls darkly down at the almost wholly uncompleted puzzle spread out in front of him.

‘Fun’. _Right._

He’s still working on it--or trying to, and failing rather--when she comes down for breakfast. Hermione is an early riser, and often the first up, but today for once he’s beat her. She gives him a curious look as she moves to find herself some breakfast, but Sirius doesn’t even glance up at her, too intent on beating his mind against the crossword puzzle and fighting the urge to beat his head against the table beneath it.

“ ‘Current geological era,’ ” he mutters to himself under his breath. He doesn’t even know what a ‘geological era’ is in the first place, much less what the current one could be—it must be some incomprehensible Muggle thing, some sort of—

“ ‘Cenozoic.’ Eight letters, C-E-N-O-Z-O-I-C. Does that fit?”

Sirius starts at the sudden voice giving unexpected aid, blinks and peers at the page, then realises she’s right and leans down to fill in the little boxes. And if she knew _that_ one—

“Alright then, ‘Early theologian,’ six letters, starts with ‘o’—”

“Origen.” Hermione doesn’t look round from pouring herself a cup of tea and starting some more toast. “O-R-I-G-E-N.”

“ ‘Parnell wanted this unusual poet as leader,’ two words, four letters each.”

“...H-O-M-E-R-U-L-E. A combination of ‘Homer’ and ‘home rule’.” Sirius glances up in time to see her slight smile as she fetches the marmalade from the refrigerator. “A bit clever, that one.”

He can’t resist throwing out more clues, one after another, and though at times she has to pause a moment to think, he never manages to stump her entirely, even after nearly a dozen attempts to do so. The animagus falls silent again as she comes to sit across from him, tea and toast and marmalade jar all in hand; now that she’s given him such a start, he can probably finish the rest on his own…or so he thinks at first. It takes less than a minute for him to find the crossword puzzle’s current, slightly more completed state every bit as unsolvable as before. Pensive, he underlines the number in front of the current clue he’s working on, then bites down on the end of the pen, unwittingly gnawing it, worrying the plastic with his teeth like a dog with a rawhide bone as he silently mulls it over.

 _‘Horrify a friend, having ignored North American region.’_ Ten letters, second-to-last letter is the ‘i’ from ‘cenozoic’—

“ ‘Appalachia.’ A-P-P-A-L-A-C-H-I-A.”

He pauses to look up and across the table at her, the abused pen dropping from his open mouth, his expression caught somewhere between awe and disbelief. Hermione calmly continues buttering her toast before glancing up; when their eyes meet, she smirks rather impishly at the look on his face that says _how?_

“You’re not the only one who can read upside-down, you know.”

Sirius finds himself grinning at her, an impulsive, instantaneous flash of white, bared teeth: a hunter’s smile for an unexpected partner in crime. This is a girl to watch out for, he thinks, still grinning as he sets mangled pen to newsprint again, a girl who’ll be going places some day.

As she leans over and points to draw his attention to another clue, Sirius abruptly recognises how much of a relief it is to him that Hermione is such close friends with his godson. She’s smart, brave, strong, and even through something small and seemingly insignificant like this, crossword puzzles early on a Sunday morning with a man who typically feels far older than he really is and does everything in his power to deny it and act otherwise, she’s proven how helpful, how caring and compassionate she is in regards to the needs of others, and also that there’s little enough chance of someone catching her off-guard, or sticking her with a problem she can’t figure out a solution to.

As he listens to the girl continue to chatter at him a bit, explaining clues and often quite literally spelling out the answers for him, his smile softens, warming with a protective sort of paternal glow. Dangerous as the times are, Sirius is more than certain of one thing, at least: he can trust that Harry will be safe, so long as he has Hermione Granger, the smartest witch of her age, at his side.


End file.
